Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Mackellar might not like the answer, but right of entry rules, permits, fit and proper people, 24 hours notice, conducting yourself properly when you are on the premises—those rules are there in the Fair Work Bill. I know the member for Mackellar is one of the loud and proud Work Choices supporters, and she was dismayed the day that the Leader of the Opposition walked out and said that Work Choices is dead. Of course, the Liberal Party members ever since have been saying, ‘How can we work out how to oppose the Fair Work Bill, to hold faith with Work Choices, without overly humiliating the Leader of the Opposition?’ That is the political problem that confronts them. So to answer that political problem, what they are going to do is misrepresent every provision of this bill, play exactly the same kinds of tricks they played in the lead-up to the last election, pretend to the Australian people that there is some union bogey here, meanwhile asking people to avert their eyes from the fact that Work Choices was about ripping off the least powerful and lowest paid people in our workplaces. It was the 16-year-old kids who suffered under Work Choices. It was the workers with the least bargaining power that suffered under Work Choices.

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